"FREE SPEECH ZONES"

Seems to me that unwillingness to congregate in designated "free speech zones" during a Presidential visit is justified, but I'll agree that there's a difficult exercise in line-drawing here.

Modern Presidents make their terms in office a constant campaign aimed at pressuring reluctant legislators and shoring up support in key states for the next election (the first is what Samuel Kernell has called "going public"). It would seem that the law should be indifferent to the President's attempts to construct media events with as little public dissent as possible. I understand that the relevant laws are justified under the supposed need for public safety, public order, and the safety of the President, but they certainly have the effect of allowing the President to craft, completely, a set of media appearances that are virtually dissent-free. I'm not sure about the political aesthetics of such an arrangement, and I'm also not sure about the neutral-sounding arguments advanced in favor of the regulations (especially the instrumental nature of the regulations that really or at least also serve unstated and undefended and undefendable ends).